House of Cards
by Damashi
Summary: Draco thinks on money, power, and family, and doesn't really play with cards.


I like building houses of cards, though setting up rows of dominos can be fun too.  Perhaps that's where this fic came from; I'm not at all sure.

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Sifting through the corners of one of the manor's attics by the lone light of his wand, Draco Malfoy found a pack of cards he thought he recognized.  Yes, it was the one he had played with a bit some years ago; he knew the feel of the worn cardboard of the box and the fingerprints from his then-grubby hands.  He didn't remember them being so small…

It wasn't really a deck of playing cards; they didn't combust during a game of Snap, so one didn't really _play_ with these.  Father had said the Malfoys of the past had used the cards for basic divination.  Draco spread them in his hands, shuffling through them.  This was certainly the deck; the ace of hearts was missing, and Father had said the family lost it years ago.  So Draco left the attic, taking with him the simple light from his wand and the cards in a pocket of his robes. 

He walked through the halls, the footfalls of his shoes on wood reverberating emptily behind him.  He saw no one; Father was working, Mother was always busy, and the house elves had learned long ago to remain out of sight unless summoned.  That was how things should be. 

Draco reached his room, turned the wrought silver handle on the polished ebony door and entered, not seeing the serpent on the tapestry suspended from the wall or the ornate embroidery on the thick velvet curtains hanging around his bed.  He was used to their presence to the point of forgetting that they were even there, but he was always conscious of their significance as trophies of the Malfoy fortune.  It was something that had been quite effectively drummed into his mind and would not slip away very easily.

Draco pulled back the hand-carved chair in front of his desk (which was over five hundred years old and had supposedly been bewitched to make its user studious and efficient, but he had his doubts), and sat down, pulling the deck and his wand from within his robes.  Slowly, he drew two cards with his wand and lifted them to his desk where they leaned precariously against each other.

He withdrew the magic, but the slips of cardboard remained as he had put them.  He supposed he could be building the card house by hand, as they wouldn't explode like normal cards (not that Father would allow normal cards in the house; he hated it when Draco made a lot of noise), but since when was that the Malfoy way?  His eyes traveled over the spotless desk and the ornate curves and curls and small gargoyles carved at its corners.  The Malfoys were wealthy beyond anyone's reckoning, and it was custom for them not to put their hands to anything, but instead watch as others did it for them, be it as simple as making a bed or be it a dubious task best kept from the Ministry. 

Draco had grown up knowing the sweetness of prosperity, and he was acutely aware of how that made him different from, say, Weasley.  Weasleys.  All of them.  They were the ones who came to school in patched hand-me-down robes that rarely even fit properly (Draco naturally was fit for new robes at least yearly.)  Their textbooks and pets were sadly lacking in quality, and once the Weasley in Draco's year (John?  Don?  Having always called him by his surname, Draco didn't remember the boy's given name and quite honestly didn't care) had spent the entire school year with a broken wand that did amusing things specifically when it wasn't supposed to.

That, Draco decided, was what happened when proper wizards associated with muggles.  Disgrace could, of course, come in many forms, and hadn't Father always said the Weasleys were a disgrace to the wizarding world?

Of course, Draco thought as he removed the magic from the fourth and last pair of cards on the second level of his creation, money wasn't the only thing that made the Malfoys what they were.  There was, as simple as it sounded, their name in itself.  It was a name preserved carefully over the generations among only wizards and witches.  He had heard tell in whispers of, here and there, a pureblood that enjoyed the society of mudbloods and occasionally even muggles, but the very mention of such traitors was not at all approved of, and soon the family would pretend the awkward matter had never existed at all.  No one ever asked for or offered forgiveness.

And that was how things should be, needed to be, if one were to keep the lines pure.  After all, if a tree branch rots, the gardener has to cut it off quickly, lest the blight spread to the rest of the tree.  The wizarding world was rapidly showing increased symptoms of the decay's spread.  Mudbloods like that Granger girl were being admitted to a once-prestigious school like Hogwarts!  Wizardry had lost its pride and fallen to pitiful depths, Father had said once, and Father was always right.  Draco had learned that long ago.

Not all wizards had so badly fallen, of course.  Those few who remained pure (like the Malfoys) remembered the times when wizarding was in all its brilliant glory and muggles remained obliviously subordinate.  The purebloods still retained their lineage and, most importantly, their power.  True, it was not what it used to me, but Father had said with cold confidence that it would grow.  Imagine!  Power beyond anything a mudblood could dream of.  _That _was how it should be. 

The card tower grew under Draco's careful fingers.

And beyond money and power and prestigious names, Draco had something else to his name, something too many took for granted; he often did, himself.  He had parents; many others didn't.  Potter didn't.  Longbottom didn't (in all ways that it mattered he didn't, anyway).  There were others, a multitude of others; that was the natural aftermath of a time of killing.  It could almost seem unfair that, while some young lives struggled alone, Draco perpetually had the tall presences of his parents behind him and their enviable social position as well. 

His fingers did not tremble as he placed the final pair on the tower to complete the second layer and began leaning cards around the base, five on each side.

True, Mother had her own concerns, and ones that often did not involve her son.  No, her focus was managing the household and aiding her husband in displaying his power and status, usually standing motionless, silent, and beautiful at his side during whatever social function he chose to attend.  Sometimes Draco completed the image of an elite and flawless family alongside his parents, but he was still a child in their eyes, and children were unpredictable and sometimes tactless in public.  He was thus most often left to his own devices. 

As for Father, he had far too much to deal with that was important.  Family fell under the category of "only when convenient," which was almost synonymous with "never."  Perhaps it actually meant something that at age three, Draco had been wholeheartedly convinced that "Father" was an owl.  After all, whenever Mother had expressed a need to consult Father on some matter concerning their son, an owl had arrived shortly afterwards with the answer.  Logic told the child that as the source of the reply, the owl must be "Father." 

Draco had learned his mistake on his own without telling anyone, something for which he was quite glad.  It was one of those anecdotes that are best kept secret to the grave for dignity's sake.  Father had his own tasks, concerns, and reasons.  He was an important and busy man, not an emotionally absent father.  The term simply could not be applied to him in all his power.

Draco carefully leaned the final, crowning two cards at the top of the tower together.  One card remained in his hand with no place to fit.  Fifty cards stood in perfect balance as he put his wand away and glanced at the final card, the one he had kept in the warmth of his hand the longest.  The ace of spades.

He placed it on the desk and stood, turning to the window, his hand idly brushing the tapestry as he passed.  Here he stood, the boy with the money the Weasleys lacked, the power and influence Granger could never hope for, the parents of perfection Potter had never had the chance to know.  Here he was, Draco Malfoy, the boy who had everything.

Everything.

He slipped the latch from its place and pushed the window open ever so slightly.  The sun was shining in the nearly empty sky (here and there a sparrow flitted in and out of sight) and a slight breeze wound its way through the trees.

Draco's eyes darted to his card tower as the moving coolness ruffled his hair; the structure shivered but did not fall.  Just as he was about to turn away, the wind caught the lone card.  He watched as the ace of spades twitched and skittered across the desk and into the base of his tower.

It tumbled noiselessly, folding in on itself in less than a second.  Gone, destroyed like everything eventually.

For a moment, Draco wondered if that was how things were supposed to be.

_Owari_

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For those who are curious, yes, the specific cards were listed intentionally.  He's playing with a divining deck after all. 


End file.
